The critical periods in the history of the world are best studied in the lives of a few representative men. The history of the German Reformation assumes a living, intelligible, and human character in the biographies of the Reformers; and no historian would imagine that he understood the secret springs of that mighty revolution in Germany without having read the works of Hutten, the table-talk of Luther, the letters of Melancthon, and the sermons of Zwingle. But although it is easy to single out representative men in the great decisive struggles of history, they are more difficult to find during the preparatory periods. The years from 1450 to 1500 are as important as the years from 1500 to 1550,—nay, to the thoughtful historian, that silent period of incubation is perhaps of deeper interest than the violent outburst of the sixteenth century. But where, during those years, are the men of sufficient eminence to represent the age in which they lived? It was an age of transition and preparation, of dissatisfaction and hesitation. Like the whole of the fifteenth century, “It was rich in scholars, copious in pedants, but poor in genius, and barren of strong thinkers.” We must not look for heroes in so unheroic an age, but be satisfied with men if they be but a head taller than their contemporaries. One of the most interesting men in whose life and writings the history of the preliminary age of the German Reformation may be studied, is Sebastian Brant, the famous author of the famous “Ship of Fools.” He was born in the year 1457. The Council of Basle had failed to fulfill the hopes of the German laity as to a _reformatio ecclesiæ in capite et membris_. In the very year of Brant’s birth, Martin Meyer, the Chancellor of Mayence, had addressed his letter to his former friend, Æneas Sylvius,—a national manifesto, in boldness and vigor only surpassed by the powerful pamphlet of Luther, “To the Nobility of the German Nation.” Germany seemed to awaken at last to her position, and to see the dangers that threatened her political and religious freedom. The new movement which had taken place in Italy in classical learning, supported chiefly by Greek refugees, began to extend its quickening influence beyond the Alps. Æneas Sylvius, afterwards Pope Pius II., 1458, writes in one of his letters, that poets were held in no estimation in Germany, though he admits that their poetry is less to be blamed for this than their patrons, the princes, who care far more for any trifles than for poetry. The Germans, he says, do not care for science nor for a knowledge of classical literature, and they have hardly heard the name of Cicero or any other orator. In the eyes of the Italians, the Germans were barbarians; and when Constantine Lascaris saw the first specimen of printing, he was told by the Italian priests that this invention had lately been made _apud barbaros in urbe __ Germaniæ_. They were dangerous neighbors—these barbarians, who could make such discoveries